Many people have anxieties and fears about speaking in front of a group. In fact, the fear of public speaking has been listed as greater than the fear of death. Often, these fears affect an individuals ability to effectively speak in public. For instance, individuals may speak too soft/loud or too slow/fast due to their nervousness or lack of practice. Due to this common and often intense fear, there are many books, video tapes, classes, etc. offered to educate or assist individuals to publically speak.
In general, most of these educational remedies include an exercise of speaking in front of a group. For instance, individuals often practice in front of friends, family members, instructors, peers and/or a video camera to gain experience and confidence as well as providing a means of evaluating the individual's speaking skills. Generally, after the individual is done speaking, the audience provides feedback indicating whether the speaker spoke too loudly/softly, too fast/slow, used slang or filler words (such as “uhm” or “ah”), or whether there were long pauses. The problem with this type of critique is that they are very subjective and, as a result, inconsistent. For instance, a speaker's volume may be too loud/fast for one listener while being at the correct volume/speed for another. In addition, since this type of feedback is provided to the individual after giving the speech it can only be used to improve the individual's future speeches. As a result, the benefits of this type of feedback can only be realized in future speeches and not the present speech.
Hence a need exists for a system and method of providing feedback on a real-time basis to a speaker to allow them to improve the quality of their real-time oral presentations and future presentations.